Austen Andrews
Austen Andrews
Contents
In 2000, Austen Andrews was commissioned to write several prequel stories (later published at the official uolbr.com Lord Blackthorn's Revenge website) as well as a trilogy of physical books to introduce Ultima Online 2 / Ultima Worlds Online: ORIGIN. In 2001, he was also commissioned to write the introduction story for Lord Blackthorn's Revenge, which was published in serial form by the BNN, as well as 4 follow-up stories which were also published by the BNN.
In March 2002, Austen was the featured celebrity for a Stratics UO Celebrity Chat.
As of 2017, the three Ultima books appear to be the only books Austen Andrews ever has published.[1] [2]
Noel LeFevre article
This February 2002 feature article about Austen Andrews was written by Noel LeFevre, a Stratics staff writer, and originally published on the Stratics: [3]
Adventures in Crime and Space Bookstore hosted a book signing with local Austin, Texas novelist Austen Andrews Saturday, February 23. His latest release, Ultima: The Technocrat War: Masquerade, is the second book in his "Ultima" trilogy.
Also on-hand was former Origin Worlds Online [ed. aka Ultima Online 2] designer Aaron "Ahriman" DeOrive. The pair met in 1985, both being new to the Austin area. Andrews explained, "I posted a note at a local comic shop looking for gamers and he called me the next day. We've been close friends ever since." In the dedication of the trilogy's first book, Ultima: The Technocrat War: Machinations, DeOrive was dubbed Andrews' "guardian devil."
Though the books bear the title "Ultima," they are not so saturated with Ultima lore that they are insupportable without it. Andrews stated, "I wrote it that way because I wanted it to be for everybody. The whole point of this was that people don't want to read game fiction. They want to read a novel." Fantasy fans will find plenty here to sink their teeth into whether or not they have ever braved the Britannian shores. The first two books of the trilogy are being received with rave reviews from all corners of the globe, by gamers and non-gamers alike.
It is impossible to tell the tale of how the trilogy came to be without mentioning the ill-fated online game "Origin Worlds Online" (OWO). As the OWO team worked to develop a follow-up to the tremendously popular "Ultima Online," DeOrive was responsible for generating much of the fiction on which the game would be based. It was a daunting task to undertake. Over the years, many die-hard fans of the game had committed much of its history and lore to memory and he was apprehensive about dabbling with their virtual world, unsure of how his changes and introductions to it would be received. "When we first started creating the history, I didn't think we'd be successful," he said. He sat down with the creator of the original Ultima series, Richard Garriott, for his insight into everything from the virtues to jukas. The story, and the game, began to take shape.
DeOrive then contacted his old pal Andrews to pen fiction for the OWO website. (These prequels have now become the basis for Origin's "Lord Blackthorn's Revenge," the recently released expansion for "Ultima Online." This upgrade includes many of the features that OWO would have contained.) Once skeptical fans were able to read Andrews' accounts of the events which would unfold in Britannia and get acquainted with the characters who would participate in them, the reception for the idea of the game warmed considerably. "The prequel really turned the tide," DeOrive remarked. "Austen really turned it around."
Origin decided then to license and market toys and merchandise related to the developing game. The fans having been so enchanted by Andrews' web fiction, he was approached to expand the story through a paperback trilogy to be published by Simon and Schuster. He admits that the decision to accept the commission was not an easy one to make. A devoted father and husband, and the son of a novelist himself, he knew what a tremendous undertaking it would be. He mulled over the decision as long as possible until DeOrive told him that if he didn't accept it, the offer would be passed along to someone else. "I came to my senses," Andrews laughed, "and said, 'Oh my god, I would be crazy to pass this up!'"
Though he had toyed around with some of the Ultima games, he had never tried his hand at "Ultima Online" or any other MMORPG. Most of his gaming experience was through the table top/pencil and paper types. "I started with D&D in 1979 but after I found 'Champions' a couple of years later, I never much went back. Even now, I only GM using 'Hero Games' rules. I also have a fondness for 'Runequest,' which has given me plenty of good times in the last two decades."
Contract-in-hand, he faced the same challenge now that DeOrive had previously: How does one make up a story about people and places borne of another man's imagination? Austen insists it was not as difficult as it may seem. Like having a hotline to God, he found assurance in that the creators of this universe were only a phone call away. "I knew a lot about it because I knew people who worked on it," he said. "This world was created by Aaron, so I didn't have any problem. We were experienced at world building because we had gamed together for so long." DeOrive had written such volumes of material about the realm and its inhabitants that Andrews was able to benefit from the wealth of knowledge already available. "I think it was the background of the whole project. He laid it out so it was a resource for the programmers." And for Andrews.
DeOrive refuses to take that much credit. Though many of the physical aspects of the realm, its races and the Virtues system was established long before Andrews became involved, the depth and richness of the inhabitants were vague. "The team came up with the skeletal story and some of the characters. Austen fleshed them out."
And fleshed them out, he has. From the first chapter of the first book, the reader is immediately drawn into the world of Montenegro, deftly and concisely. Andrews' economy with words and the skill with which he chooses them keeps the story fast-paced and exciting. As he delved into his task of bringing the characters to life, he acknowledges that they often took on lives of their own. Andrews said, "Montenegro was the most forceful of the bunch in terms of resisting my outlines. I had originally intended him to be even more of a bastard than he is. The Virtues are definitely inside him. But Way Master Thulann spoke most clearly to me. I was surprised how robustly she emerged. Deep down inside, I think I must be a sixty-six year-old female martial artist with green skin and no nose." He added, "Montenegro has a line in Book 2 that particularly sticks with me: 'The purpose of great skill is not to win more victories, but to win better victories.' In today's world, the sentiment really resonates, doesn't it?"
The first book was finished and Andrews was two-thirds done with the second when Origin suddenly announced it was pulling the plug on OWO. Wails of lament rang out from the gaming community as the news hit, reminiscent - in a drama queen sort of way - of the scene in "Star Wars" when Alderaan explodes ("I felt a disturbance in the force, like thousands of voices all crying out at once, and suddenly silenced.") Programmers, writers and community liaisons abruptly found themselves out of work. Aaron DeOrive was one of the casualties. Andrews finished Book 2 and set to work on Book 3, which was completed in October and will be released in May.
Though Ultima: The Techno War: Maelstrom will be the final installment in this series by Andrews, he doesn't rule out publishing more books in the future. It's genetic. His father, the science fiction novelist Arlan Keith Andrews, Sr., has an expansive list of works to his credit, including one co-written with his son. When asked what valuable information he gained from his father he would be willing to impart to others who might be entertaining romantic thoughts of becoming a novelist, Andrews was generous with his response. "Now that I'm a father myself, I have a better appreciation for what my own father gave to me. He didn't give me advice about how to be a professional writer. He gave me a living example. I watched him pursue writing in addition to his day job, because writing doesn't generate enough money to live on. [Andrews himself, a Java script programmer, is currently between jobs and doesn't rule out the possibility of accepting employment in the gaming industry.] I watched him chase after his interests in science and engineering, giving him the background to write science fiction, instead of wasting time and sweat being a fan of someone else's work. I watched him network with editors and other writers, which is the proverbial inside track. I watched him market stories often for years at a time because rejection is par for the course."
"More than anything else," he added, "I learned that writing is real, in the sense that it is just another part of mundane, everyday life. There's not much glamor in it. There's definitely not a lot of money in it. You have to write and market stories alongside grocery shopping and paying bills and raising a family. It's filing cabinets and obscure tax forms and dirt-under-your-fingernails work. But once you slog through all that stuff, the sight of your story in print, typeset and illustrated and sitting in a reader's hands, makes all that work seem to vanish. The payoff is personal and tremendous."
Ultima Online 2 / Ultima Worlds Online: ORIGIN stories
- The Technocrat War, Book 1: Machinations
- The Technocrat War, Book 2: Masquerade
- The Technocrat War, Book 3: Maelstrom
- The Prequel Legends (2000)
Lord Blackthorn's Revenge stories
- A Tale of Revenge
- Chapter 1: Beginnings
- Chapter 2: The Challenge
- Chapter 3: Clash in the Darkness
- Chapter 4: The Beast
- Chapter 5: Revenge
- Chapter 6: Inferno
- Chapter 7: Change
- Chapter 8: The Watcher
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